


Moon Over Bourbon Street

by rotrude



Series: Moon Over Bourbon Street [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M, Temporary Character Death, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 03:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/303279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rotrude/pseuds/rotrude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing to do with New Orleans sadly, but a lot to do with the theme of the song. Basically a rip off of Shilling Shockers, Victorian Gothic and Sting. 1888. A vampire. Whitehcapel. Some blink and you miss it hinting at the Jack the Ripper story in a kind of cross-overish way. Merlin, a quiet East End bartender, knows Arthur but does he really know him? And if Arthur can’t protect Merlin, what can he do?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moon Over Bourbon Street

Arthur lifts his coat’s collar, shoulders hunching into it, hands buried in his pockets. Sighing, he tips his head back and looks up.

The moon is spectacularly bright up in the sky tonight, a perfectly round disc that reflects gossamer silvery light back on earth, where a watery mist has started rising from the ground, threading its wispy way upwards, looking like the needy arms of desperate beggar children, silent ghosts straining to find heaven.

The tops of the decayed, rot-eaten buildings are no longer visible, enveloped in fog and shadows as they are.

Alone, standing at the mouth of a narrow brick lane that through a meandering path leads to the most disreputable area in this city of lost souls, he watches people pass by, go about their business. Here now, soon forgotten.

From his hiding spot, he can hear jarring raucous laughter, soft innuendo-laced words, seductive drawls, drunken gibberish promoted to the level of gospel by the drunken mouths of confirmed sinners.

The sound of heels on cobblestones can be heard just as the one produced by the treading of shoes on the shards of broken bottles can. Discordant noises continue to reach his ears: pants and moans; orgasm reached; the desperate meowing of a tomcat; the notes of a musical number played on a fiddle; the splashing sound of water from the ebbing river.

These noises waft up to him as if they want to ensnare his senses. Without even focusing on it, he can smell the alcohol on the air, the sin, the temptation. He can smell lust, passion, want, sex. They reek of it – people. And yet, they – this motley crowd – they all look washed out in the glare of the artificial gas lamplights.

Arthur thinks they're all like him tonight, after all, even though they're ephemeral, lost, and transient. Though none is more lost than him.

The bright lights from the pubs scattered around the neighbourhood throw a certain eerie glow on the scene, though Arthur stays in the dark.

Undecided, he stays put, waiting and waiting, a clock beating the hour far, far away. He keeps immobile till he no longer can, till he tells himself he can have another night and another smile directed at him. One more.

He berates himself for his own foolishness, and yet he caves in, taking a step and another one and another one.

He steps inside the pub and doesn't spare its patrons a glance. They're just white noise, a blur of colour.

He makes for the bar instead, zigzagging past tables around which men and women are seated, revelling in the forgetfulness blessed inebriation provides.

Bar in sight, he sees him and settles on a stool.

Merlin's drying glasses tonight, passing and re-passing a red cloth that looks more like a rag round their chipped rims.

“Hello, Arthur,” he says, as if he's happy to see him. “The usual?”

“Yes,” says Arthur.

Merlin turns and picks up a dusty bottle from a shelf. He methodically pours a measure in a tumbler, and satisfied, pushes it towards Arthur, who cradles the short glass within the circle formed by his index and thumb.

“It's been ten days,” Merlin says, now swiping at the bar counter with his ragged, threadbare cloth. He isn't very thorough about it. He seems more interested in making small talk.

“If you saw your other patrons as often as you do me you'd peg them as drunkards.”

“Probably. But then again you never drink what you order.”

Without hesitation Arthur downs his drink. It tastes like ashes, but Merlin needn't know.

“So where you been?”

Arthur doesn't lie. He still has honour. But he can't tell him either, so he tells him as much as he can. “I kept to myself for a while.” He fiddles with his glass. “That's not how you clean a counter, by the way.” Glancing away from the counter, he meets Merlin’s eyes.

“Because you're very knowledgeable about menial stuff, are you?” Merlin narrows his eyes at him. It's not a glare; it's his quirkily pensive face. “What are you: the prince of Wales going incognito, by the way? An aristocrat from the continent? You know, playing at being mysterious is not all that it's cracked up to be. Not so fascinating.” The merry tone flickers out of Merlin's voice. “I thought we were, God forbid, friends.”

“I've had long experience at a lot of things. And... We can't be that.”

“Why?” asks Merlin, pained. “Because you're a secret lord and I'm a poor bartender from Ealdor, Nowhere? Look around you. No one would care. If anything people are more afraid of what's been happening to those girls than interested in what you may get up to. Mary even asked me to check the back exit the other day because someone was lurking.”

Arthur plays Merlin in the only way he knows how. “No, we can't be friends because you're an idiot and I've no patience for such people.” He remembers how to sound like that, as though he’s most people’s natural superior.

Merlin ducks his head. “As you wish.”

Arthur thinks about Merlin's words as Merlin serves a girl, a regular who winks at him. She's wearing a low-cut dress that allows her ample, milky white bosom to almost pop out. She brushes her knuckles across the back of Merlin's hand and Arthur feels driven by two opposite instincts. The first is to growl at her, low and terrifying, so that she'd scarper away and never make eyes at Merlin again. The other is to leave Merlin to her, in better hands that might take proper care of him.

He knows what to attribute the first instinct to so he suppresses it. That had never been him, not once upon a time. And the memory of those values he once held sacred are all he can cling to, that shade of honour that is now tarnished by his very existence.

The girl retreats to her table, drink in hand. Tipsy, she falls into the lap of a gentleman of what Arthur judges to be some kind of shady repute.

“Is it because I tease you?” Merlin asks when no one can hear them. “That we can't be friends? I never meant to hurt you. I just thought that we were on the same page.”

“No, it's not your pedestrian attempts at making fun of me that are dictating the choice.”

Merlin's eyes go soft. “See, you make it so easy. You can't resist. I can't either.” Merlin slings the rag he's used for polishing over his shoulder. “My lord prat.”

“I should, however.”

“What? Be obnoxious to me on a regular basis?”

Arthur's focuses on Merlin. If he closes his eyes he can sense his heart beating. To a steady, healthy thrum. “No. I can’t because I should be the man I used to be.”

Let Merlin assume.

Merlin cants his heap to lean into the counter. “Tell me about him.”

Arthur could. Arthur could get lost in that world but there is no way he will blacken Merlin's. “Merlin, I—”

“It's fine,” Merlin tells him. Merlin does have a sixth sense when it comes to lending his ear to people's problems. He might come across as hopelessly naïve at times, but his heart of gold makes him the perfect shoulder to cry on, a good friend. “You don’t have to if it pains you. The life you knew before. I imagine how that can be. You hear things in my position.” He smiles softly, self-deprecatingly. “I'll just go throw the empties outside. In the meanwhile you could hold the fort for me perhaps and consider whether I deserve the honour of hearing your true sob-story.”

From anyone else that would have been an irritating intrusion, a cheap shot at humour. Arthur would have walked away if it had been anyone else. But Merlin makes Arthur want to drop the mask, however terrible the prospect is. No defences. No more walls, someone to see through him.

Grinning, he stands and vaults over the counter, not even remotely upsetting the precarious balance of glasses and bottles arranged on and around it.

“That was fairly athletic,” Merlin says, sounding winded. For a moment he sidles closer, Merlin's hip brushing against Arthur's side. Merlin's heart is now going at a hurried pace, Arthur observes. A frantic thrumming like heaving seas in a gale. He’s sweating; his hands must no longer be dry. He also smells differently now. Heady.

“I'll go do my... bartenderly duty.”

“Do go. I think I can find my way around pouring the odd drink.”

“I'll have you know that mixing them isn't easy. There's an art to it.”

“I'm sure. I'll scare the patrons into ordering something simple then.”

“You could. But then you give off this decent person vibe....” Merlin tails off. “They're used to knaves.”

“Go, Merlin.”

Merlin passes a hand through his hair and, without taking his eyes off Arthur, starts walking backwards towards the kitchens and backdoor. The backdoor, Arthur knows, gives onto an empty lane a stone's throw away from Whitechapel’s loneliest side streets and half-ruined warehouses. It's a dank and rank corner; Merlin's told Arthur he doesn't quite like having to pop in there at any time, but more so when it’s dark. Scary stories from when I was a kid, I guess. Yet they — bartenders and owner — throw the rubbish there so the customers can't see it.

“A whisky, young man,” a portly customer tells Arthur. He has the potbelly and bloated face typical of those accustomed to drink too much alcohol and the ragged lineaments of someone who used to be a sailor.

Arthur's lips quirk at the corners. He straightens, turns a thin-sided glass downside up and fills it to quarter capacity, pushing it towards the customer.

In one quick gulp, the man drains its contents.

And that's when Arthur hears it. It's a loud though dull crushing sound followed by one pained out-cry.

Arthur is out in the backstreet before he can even blink. What he sees once he’s careened past the backdoor is the figure of a man fleeing in the darkness, the folds of a dark cloak billowing behind him; the glint of something shiny in his hand and Arthur feels his stone-cold heart drop.

He turns. He doesn't need to because Merlin's wet moans tell him what he needs to know.

Merlin's lying in a pool of his own blood, a few upturned crates behind him and under him as if he’s bowled into them; blood’s everywhere, looking dark instead of crimson on the slippery flagstones.

Arthur's instincts soar high. Lifeblood. Blood. He roars. His nostrils flare. Blood is life. His fangs come down as much as he commands them not to.

He's on his knees at Merlin's side now. For a second he hesitates, dipping his fingers in the blood collected on Merlin's stomach, grazing the margins of the wound.

Merlin hisses, body rising.

No, no. He's hurting him.

He snatches his hand away.

“A— Arthur,” Merlin says, recognising him, as innocent of all knowledge as he was before. But the light is fading out from his eyes.

At this, Arthur balls his fists at his side, unclenches them, makes a fist of his hands again. He thinks of meeting Merlin, bumping into him in a crowded street near the Docks one night not too long ago.

“Sorry, sorry.”

“Watch were you're going.”

“I apologised, my lord.” A mock bow.

“See that you don't again.”

“Tetchy.”

Shining eyes, a smile ever since. Merlin, all of nineteen and never suspecting that life can play dirty. A wide-eyed young man believing in good causes and making his way in the wide world with whatever he has at his disposal.

Arthur's fangs retract.

“Mary,” Merlin tries to say, but Arthur hushes him, puts a finger on his lips and says, “Shh, Merlin, I'll run for a doctor. I'll get you a doctor.”

“Mary, she isn't here... I— Save her.”

Merlin's hands grip the folds of Arthur's coat at elbow level. “Save her. But... I've...” Blood trickles from the side of Merlin's lips and Arthur isn’t enticed by that. He doesn't care. He's won over the beast. “...always wanted to kiss you.” Merlin coughs wetly. A jarring dissonant attack that leaves him shaking subtly. “Always. I... guess.” More of that rattling cough. “Now or never.”

“No.” Arthur shakes his head.

“Let me go like that.”

Merlin's pupils are large, his eyes now unfocused; Arthur doubts Merlin can see him, can see anything anymore. He's shocking into his arms, leg twitching, his hand giving up its hold.

“No,” Arthur repeats. There's no point in summoning help; he's well aware of that. Merlin's growing cold, his skin clammy. As cold as Arthur's heart and skin are. Merlin’s heartbeat is a strained flurry that is soon going to be silenced. He's gurgling, choking on his own fluids. He’s being drained.

Arthur throws his head back and cries out his rage at the heavens. He refuses to. He refuses to. He refuses to.

Merlin's heartbeat is fading, taking him away. Even that kiss would no longer be felt, be no comfort.

Arthur lets go then, lets the animal in him take over.

He bends down over Merlin, tilts his head to the side so it's perfectly positioned to allow Arthur access, and puts his lips to Merlin’s pale neck, rubbing and nuzzling, licking at the pulse point with the tip of his tongue.

The sweet, tangy smell of blood fills his nostrils; and with any other person he'd be past the point of no return. Not now. Not now.

He kisses the skin he finds, lapping along a tendon, following the tracery of Merlin's jugular with his tongue like an animal grooming its young.

A kiss on the throat.

It's time; time to sink his teeth into him.

 

The End


End file.
